Governance matters for green growth in BRICS+ Economics: how political, institutional, and economic channels moderate the ecological footprint

The proposition that green growth can reconcile economic advancement with ecological sustainability has gained considerable policy traction, yet its empirical realization remains deeply contingent on the governance architectures within which it is embedded. This contingency is particularly consequential for BRICS+ economies, where developmental imperatives frequently collide with environmental constraints. This study investigates how political, institutional, and economic governance dimensions moderate the green growth–ecological footprint relationship across seven BRICS+ economies from 2000 to 2024. Employing simultaneous quantile regression with FMOLS for robustness to capture heterogeneous effects across ecological footprint quantiles, complemented by the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test to establish causal directions, the study finds that green growth significantly reduces ecological footprints across all quantiles, with stronger effects at higher environmental stress levels. Political and institutional governance emerges as an exogenous policy tool that unidirectionally reduces the ecological footprint, while green growth acts as a critical mediator driving economic growth without being caused by it. However, digitalization exhibits a bidirectional causal relationship with the ecological footprint, indicating that while it enables green innovation, it currently exacerbates environmental degradation, underscoring the need for governance-directed sustainable digital policies. These findings carry significant policy implications, emphasizing the need for differentiated governance reforms aligned with the SDGs, prioritizing political accountability, rule of law, and corruption control to unlock green growth's environmental potential. However, the study is limited by its BRICS+ focus and aggregate governance indicators, which may mask sub-national variations, suggesting future research should extend to broader panels, incorporate sub-national governance data, and explore sectoral governance and informal institutions to further validate and refine these findings.